Congress Races to Finalize Last Remaining FY 2024 Spending Bills

Congress will return on Tuesday with less than one week until the next government funding deadline. As of this writing, five out of the remaining six spending bills are reportedly ready to go, but policy disagreements over the fiscal year (FY) 2024 measure for Homeland Security have yet to be ironed out. As such, leadership is discussing another continuing resolution (CR) for the Homeland Security bill while the remaining measures — Labor-HHS-Education, Defense, Financial Services and General Government (FSGG), State-Foreign Operations, and Legislative Branch — get packaged together in another “minibus.” After missing their goal of releasing text for the next appropriations package this past weekend, leadership is hopeful they can file something before lawmakers return tomorrow. However, much remains in flux pending the outcome of ongoing negotiations.